


Circles and Circles and Circles Again

by lalejandra



Category: Everwood
Genre: M/M, Transformative Works Welcome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-02-06
Updated: 2004-02-06
Packaged: 2019-07-14 11:26:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16039535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalejandra/pseuds/lalejandra





	Circles and Circles and Circles Again

**Part One**

*

Sometimes when Ephram is walking down the streets of New York, or sitting in a restaurant, or riding the subway, he thinks he sees Bright.

He knows that it can't be, that his mind is playing tricks on him, because Bright would never leave Everwood, but he pretends for a minute that Bright's come out to the East Coast and hunted him up to say hi, how are you, what's life been like?

Ephram has Bright's email address -- but he's never used it. Not in six years. And he hasn't been back to Everwood in six years, and he hasn't spoken to Amy or Madison either. Not in six years, since he left Everwood for the New School University dorms in the East Village.

He didn't stay there very long, though. It didn't take more than a few weeks of classes at the Mannes School of Jazz for him to realize that school wasn't what he wanted to do. He was more advanced than half the teachers, at least, and if he didn't sit properly at the piano, so what? He played from the heart -- he _felt_ the music. None of those dicks could hold a candle to Will Cleveland. He filled out all the paperwork, moved out of the dorms, and used his tuition refund to rent a small apartment on the Upper East Side, right near the Lennox Hill Hospital and his old synagogue and the 6 train and John Jay Park, only one block away from the East River.

The refund, even with the 10% charge for dropping his classes after the official add/drop date, was more than enough for first, last, security, plus another four months of rent, plus all his expenses. This struck him as all kinds of bad and wrong, considering how expensive New York City real estate and utilities were.

Andy was, understandably, pissed -- especially because Ephram waited a week to tell him. But Ephram's college tuition came out of the trust fund his mother left him, and after Andy yelled, Ephram yelled, and a few weeks later, Andy sent Ephram an email -- he'd bought the building. _After all_ , the email said, _investing in New York real estate is never a risky proposition._

Ephram had rolled his eyes and asked if he could have his rent back. Andy told him that he couldn't have any more money until he got a job, so Ephram played a few gigs at the C-Note, some at the Living Room -- but that wasn't what he wanted to do either. He needed to play for _someone_ , and Will had died the year before. Playing for himself just wasn't enough anymore -- there was nothing in the music that he hadn't already found, and writing his own only reminded him of Madison, which he didn't need. Or want. Or care about one way or the other, but he'd rather not think of her.

He thought about having his dad send him Les Paul's guitar, which Will had left him -- along with all the other instruments. After all, wasn't that what Will had told him? _If you're playing for applause, get a guitar._ But he wasn't playing for applause. He wasn't playing for anything. He couldn't even look at a musical instrument without feeling a little nauseated; he skirted the buskers in the subway after a really close call with some potentially projectile vomit.

So he budgeted his money and bummed around the parks, sat in corners in museums listening to his iPod, walked around the Cloisters, stared into the sky, didn't answer his cell phone. Not that anyone called him except his father and Delia -- no, he'd pretty much burned all his bridges. Except for Bright, but everyone knew that when you said, "We'll keep in touch," it meant you won't. He stayed away from watching television -- didn't invest in TiVo or digital cable, or any of that shit. Sitting on his ass all day watching _Kim Possible_ was too Post-Colin-Pre-Tommy-Depressed-Amy-Abbott for him. He needed to be out, doing things. Seeing people. Breathing pollution.

He went to the Apple Store in SoHo sometimes, stopped at Dean & DeLuca for coffee with too much milk and not enough sugar, played the free games on their computer stations that his laptop wasn't powerful enough for, and listened to people curse the Genius Bar. He took the 6 train to Union Square every morning, walked up to Sixth Avenue, got a bagel at Murray's. He tried all different combinations -- maple raisin walnut cream cheese on an everything bagel, scallion tofu cream cheese on whole grain, cream cheese with the lox already mixed in on pumpernickel with tomato...

After the first cup of Murray's coffee, which tasted worse than his dad's liquid dirt, Ephram walked the ten steps to the Xando on the corner, and got his coffee there. The corner Xando was on was the same corner that the New School buildings with the Mannes practice rooms and the computer centers were on, so he sometimes saw the kids from his classes. He'd nod, they'd nod, and they'd go their separate ways.

Sometimes he wandered around his old neighborhood, wondered if any of his old friends would remember him if they saw him on the street. Had he changed so much in three years? No, he didn't think so -- he was the same old Ephram Brown when he looked in the mirror. Small eyes, busted nose, pasty skin. Maybe the problem was his hair. He stopped at Ricky's and bought bleach and dye, and then his hair was back the way it had been when he was fifteen and punkass -- but blue this time. Dark blue. The dye was called Superman Black, and he liked it a hell of a lot.

He walked down St. Mark's Place, rolling his eyes at the pierced and tattooed kids with Mohawks and studded leather jackets. They all, he knew, had more money than he did; why anyone would want to sleep on a New York street when they had a nice house in Connecticut to go home to, he didn't know. "Summer squatter, go home!" he sang under his breath, even though it was already November. Still, the fishnet T-shirts at Trash and Vaudeville were as overpriced as he remembered them, and he bought a couple, and another studded belt, and, on a whim, eyeliner.

 _I'm not coming home for Thanksgiving_ , he emailed to his father. _Maybe you and D. will come here for Christmas/Hanukah?_

 _I'm shocked, Ephram_ , came his dad's response, and Ephram couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic or sincere. _Call your grandmother; she's worried. PS, Delia sticks her tongue out at you._

Ephram did better than call her -- he showed up at his grandparents' apartment, bearing knishes from Ratner's, bagels and lox and whitefish from Zabar's, a dozen yellow roses, and a cake from John Vie. All was forgiven, and he spent Thanksgiving with them too. It was better than he thought it would be -- they talked about his mother and music and looked at old family pictures, and not once did his grandmother nag or his grandfather mention jobs. It was comfortable. It was like he was an adult.

It made him realize he had to do something with his life. And possibly find someone to talk to. And maybe kiss.

He was nervous, standing outside the Pyramid Club, dressed all in black. He'd even put eyeliner on for the occasion. It had been a long time since the last time he felt out of his element -- that first day in Everwood. The first day of school in Everwood. He didn't expect to feel out of his element in New York, ever. So he took a deep breath and paid his fifteen dollars, and discovered that he liked to dance to too-loud music in a too-hot club with too-pretty boys. Who'd have thought that the boy who mooned over Amy Abbott for a year would let himself be kissed in a bathroom by an anonymous man with broad shoulders and narrow hips?

He laughed in the middle of the kiss, thinking of what Madison would say. She'd purse her lips, and get that look on her face, the one she always got when she wasn't sure whether to kiss him or hit him. The man -- oh, and he was a man -- pulled away. "Well, kid?" he said.

"Well," replied Ephram, and dropped to his knees on the tile floor. It didn't occur to him until afterwards that this was New York, not Everwood, and he should have made the guy wear a condom. But who wanted to suck on latex? Ephram didn't even like blowing up balloons.

Before Ephram knew it, he was working part time at a record and zine store in the East Village, and the kids he'd been nodding at in Xando were his friends, who came over on the weekends and asked for his help with their compositions and sometimes brought weed. Really good weed. There was an advantage to going to a school filled with trust fund babies -- they had the money to buy the good stuff, and never thought twice about ordering from the gourmet Indian place around the corner when they had the munchies, and took cabs everywhere. Ephram liked the subway, but he liked cabs better -- especially at three a.m., when all he wanted to do was get his hands down the pants of tonight's lay.

He learned how to say the word "trick" without snickering, and how to tell who the hustlers were, and sometimes he went home with women, too, but none of them had long, straight hair, or soft eyes, or puffy lips.

And then it was a year, two years later, and Ephram was invited to be in a jazz quintet with some of the kids from Mannes, and he had slept with each of them at one point or another, but now they were paired off, and he was the odd man out, playing piano in the corner. It made him want a piano again -- he'd been playing on a little Casio keyboard, mostly, when he felt like playing at all. Which wasn't often. So when he suddenly had an urgent desire for ivory under his fingers, he emailed his father.

  
_Dad, I have to move. I need a room for a piano. Do I have enough money in my trust fund for a big enough place?_

Andy didn't respond and didn't respond, but the next week came a FedEx package with blueprints and an address in Brooklyn and a note that said, in his dad's lamentable doctor handwriting, _I've been waiting for this. So has the building._

It was a huge warehouse off the L train, with a health food store-slash-art space on the ground floor, and two floor-through apartments occupied by art students going to Pratt (if the advertisements for shows in the foyer were any indication), and a huge, unoccupied penthouse loft with no walls, but floor-to-ceiling windows.

When Ephram got home that night he called his father. "You have too much fun buying real estate," he said.

"Just wait," said Andy, "until you get married and decide you want a house to raise your family in."

"I don't think I want to know," replied Ephram. "But would it bother you a lot if I didn't get married?"

"Well, I understand that some people believe that marriage is an outdated institution, a symbol of patriarchal oppression -- "

"No, I meant, like. Be-because I might be gay."

"Ephram, even gay men can have families."

Ephram pictured his father's earnest expression in his mind, the one he wore when he was trying to explain something to Ephram that he didn't think Ephram would understand, and smiled. "Okay, dad. Tell Delia I love her."

"Ephram." His father's tone was warning. "If you meet someone nice, make sure your grandparents get introduced to her. Or him."

"You're being a lot cooler about this than I thought you'd be," replied Ephram, circumventing the order.

"Why else would you have broken up with Madison?" Andy laughed as he disconnected the phone, and Ephram shook his head. It wasn't why he'd broken up with Madison -- at least, he didn't think so. He'd broken up with Madison because even at eighteen, she'd claimed he was too young for sex. It wasn't so much that she wouldn't put out for him -- it was that she thought he was too young to put out for her. He had a mother, and she was dead, and he wanted Madison to be his _girlfriend_ , his lover -- not his babysitter.

But that would be a little too complicated to explain to his father, he though, without either a lot of stammering and blushing, or a lot of whiskey.

He moved at the end of the month, and bought a baby grand.

It felt weird to sit at his own piano again. The bench was hard -- he'd gotten used to his padded stool that was now across the room. The keyboard was still going to get a lot of use, but oh. A piano.

He rested his fingers lightly on the ivory keys, and wondered how many elephants had to die for this moment. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath and thought of Will Cleveland, and let the music out of his fingers.

Playing someone else's compositions wasn't anything like just sitting there, banging away, using his memories of Will's voice -- _pianoFORTE, softLOUD softLOUD_ \-- to count the beats. How had he lived without this? What had possessed him, to give this up? Who the fuck was he to have ever stopped doing this?

He pulled his old laptop close to the piano, let it record three minutes of his frenzied playing, and emailed it to his father. _Rhapsody in Brooklyn_ , he wrote in the accompanying email. _Thanks._

  
_Are you coming home for Thanksgiving this year?_ asked his father's reply.

Ephram only scowled at the computer and shut it down. The next day a huge truck arrived, filled with all the instruments and records that used to be in Will Cleveland's house. Ephram didn't leave his apartment for three days -- not until he had everything perfectly set up the way Will would have wanted it. When he finally surfaced, he was ravenous -- he'd been surviving on soy milk and peanut butter Puffins and apples from the health food store, and his stomach was growling for heavier fare.

While he was looking for meaning in Manhattan, it hadn't occurred to him to take the train into Brooklyn. He more than made up for the lost time, wandering around his neighborhood, eating greasy breakfasts at the diner up the block that catered to the factory workers, buying dinner from the taco stands further down Flushing Avenue. He browsed through the thrift stores that were filled with faded and worn pairs of Dickies and plaid shirts with mother-of-pearl snaps. The L train was never empty the way the 6 could be -- even at four a.m., it was crowded full of noisy people cursing at each other and fighting for the seats. It was even cheaper to take a cab from the Lower East Side over the Williamsburg Bridge than it was to take a cab up to East 77th and Avenue A.

The only thing Brooklyn seemed to lack was people Ephram could sleep with -- not that he ever slept with any of them. He was still, technically, a virgin. But nobody had really appealed to him enough for him to want to invest the time in actually fucking them. The men didn't care -- blowjobs were fine by them. And the girls didn't care -- they all thought, or so it seemed to Ephram, that it was amazing that there was a man who was more interested in going down on them than getting them to bounce on his dick. Plus, Ephram wasn't sure he _wanted_ to fuck a guy -- and he certainly didn't want to chance getting some random girl pregnant. A father at twenty wasn't what he wanted.

He felt kind of creeped out by the idea that he was now the age that Madison had been when they'd started dating. He couldn't imagine dating a sixteen year old -- girl or boy. No matter how old their soul was. What had been wrong with her?

In three years, Delia would be the age that Ephram had been when he and Madison started dating. If she dated some guy who was twenty, Ephram thought maybe he would find the guy and beat the shit out of him. Was that how his dad had felt? Had he wanted to wring Madison's neck when he caught them kissing? Did he feel overwhelmed by violence?

It made Ephram dizzy. He never wanted children -- that was it. No way.

His favorite thing to do in Brooklyn was eat. It was almost as good as eating in Manhattan -- he tried Caribbean food, went to an old White Castle that had been turned into a vegetarian restaurant and ate Creole tempeh, bought cheese from Queso de Azteca, the store halfway between his apartment and the 24 hour gas station on Bushwick Avenue. He steered clear of the Life Caf and all the kids wearing denim jackets outside it -- there, he figured, were the people he could sleep with. But the café didn't belong on its block, surrounded by tenement houses and factories, and he couldn't bring himself to contribute any more than he already was to the gentrification of the neighborhood. Instead, when he wanted blander food, he walked the two miles (or took the train four stops) into Williamsburg proper, where it was already gentrified, where the only families were hipsters with trust funds living with other hipsters with trust funds, and ate at restaurants on Bedford Avenue.

He posted a sign in the train station, and on the bulletin board at the local C-Town: Cheap Piano Lessons. Less than a day later, he was supplementing his income by teaching what his father called "the underprivileged urban youth" scales for ten dollars per lesson. He didn't need the money -- it just felt like something he was supposed to do when he looked around the neighborhood and saw the contrast between himself and the other people who lived there. Living here made him think about what his life would be like, right at that moment, if he hadn't money -- so much money that he never, not once, thought about it. There were no contrasts on the Upper East Side -- there was only rich and richer. Even the East Village, despite being filled with homeless people, wasn't a place where the struggling lived, not really.

And it made him feel good.

And it gave him people to touch in non-sexual ways. And in sexual ways. He didn't know why he never figured that people who listened to hip hop and drove gold cars could be gay. He lost his virginity to the single dad of three girls who bartended at the salsa club across from the gas station. One of his daughters liked jazz, another liked classical, and the third preferred the meringue to everything else -- and Jonas Jean-Baptiste liked good old rock ‘n' roll, and fucked Ephram to Chuck Berry, moving his hips in time with the beat.

It was kind of like when he put his fingers back on the piano keys -- all Ephram could think was, "Why didn't I want to do this?"

His dad and Delia came out for Christmas/Hanukah -- or, as Delia had taken to calling it, Chrismukkuh. They liked his space, liked the instruments in all four corners, the records carefully organized, and the bed between the piano and the keyboard. Delia asked, "Why is there no color here? Everything is black and white, Ephram! This is horrible!" She painted each of his window frames a different color, bought a sunny yellow slipcover for his black futon that he told her he liked, but knew he would take off as soon as she left, moved his magnetic poetry into pornographic verse on his refrigerator, tried to talk to him about Bright, but he kept cutting her off -- and waggled her eyebrows and grinned when Jonas brought over doughnuts the day after Christmas, and nudged his oldest daughter forward.

"Sò Anne just wanted to say Merry Christmas," he said, but he smiled only at Ephram.

Andy nudged Ephram in the side while they poured coffee together in the kitchen and Jonas told Delia about Haiti and Puerto Rico.

"Forget it, Dad," hissed Ephram. "It's not like that."

Andy still smiled all day, and all day the next day, and winked at Ephram when they left to go back to Everwood.

 _What's up with dad?_ he asked Delia in an email. _He was too cheerful, even for him._

 _Linda left him to go back to China_ , replied Delia. _Do you think Sò Anne would teach my how to braid my hair like that when I come next time?_

 _I'll ask her. He's better off without Linda anyway. Didn't she remind you of that psycho from_ Melrose Place _?_

_Who? I think he should marry Nina. That way I won't have to marry Sam._

Ephram liked the idea of his dad with Nina -- and Sam probably was just about the right age to be following Delia around. Ephram wondered if Delia was still the only girl in Everwood who knew up from down, but didn't want to ask, because then Delia would bring Madison into it. Or Amy. And he wanted to ask her about Bright, but he wouldn't do that either. If Bright wanted him to know what was going on, Bright would tell him himself.

And another year, and another. Jonas met a lovely Hispanic woman who could be a mother to his kids. Ephram finally slept with a woman -- many women. He hadn't been in love with Jonas, but it was good sex, regularly, and he'd liked the kids, who'd all stopped coming to piano lessons. Instead of grieving for what could have been, he threw himself into what was. Breasts didn't compare to hairy pecs, and soft, round frames were nothing next to broad, strong shoulders and rectangular fingers, but Ephram still enjoyed himself.

Ruth and Jacob both died, within twenty-four hours of each other, and Ephram planned the funerals, and felt kind of shitty about himself for feeling proud that he was able to handle it so well. His dad and Delia flew out for the funerals, and Delia brought along a brand new yellow slipcover for his futon, throwing away the old one and replacing it with one exactly the same and just as ugly. When they came out for the unveiling a year later, Delia brought yet another ugly yellow slipcover and insisted it added "cheer" to the room. It made Ephram want to puke, but he never stripped it off and threw it away.

His quintet broke up, and a quartet formed, without the snarky fiddler who'd caused all the problems. The velvet-throated vocalist found excuses to touch Ephram, but he knew better -- and she had grown out her hair since the last time he'd gotten to his knees in front of her, and now she looked too much like Amy.

The further away from Everwood Ephram got, the less he felt like he was living in a daze. He sat up, took notice, played feverishly, played solo shows. He would sit down at the piano to applause, and stand up again to applause, but always his eyes were focused on Will Cleveland's face in his mind -- _pianoFORTE, pianoFORTE_. And when he was approached by some kids from a Brooklyn-based band who were laying down demo tracks on a jazz-influenced pop album, he couldn't say no, and he helped them produce it too. When they were signed by Equal Vision four months later, they told Ephram they were cutting out the piano -- but they asked him to do the production on their first album.

Ephram had never thought about being involved in music without playing music. How could he? His heart was in wire and pedals. But it paid well, and it was a puzzle, like writing out the sheet music for Tatum, listening backwards, all the tricks Will taught him.

Plus, Ephram had never made more than one hundred dollars a day before. Hell, none of Ephram's paychecks had ever totaled in the three-digits before.

Ephram toasted Eris with a bottle of apple wine on his 23rd birthday, got just drunk enough to get maudlin, and cried himself to sleep thinking about fifteen year old Ephram, Amy Abbott, Colin Hart, and Bright Abbott. He wondered if Delia was having as hard a time being sixteen as he did -- hopefully the only person who liked her wasn't dead by her father's hand.

Ephram didn't mean it like that, but wine made him sappy and cranky. He slept it off, and then went out at one a.m., and brought home with a beautiful young thing in eyeliner and a fishnet T-shirt, who reminded him of himself when he was 18, right down to the whispered "No names," and the groping in the taxi going over the bridge, scandalizing the cab driver.

It was a night of remembering his past, wallowing in it.

  
_Happy Birthday_ , read Delia's email. _Amy & Tommy are getting married. She's decided she wants to be a stay-at-home mom. Her kids are going to be mad fucked up, yo. & Guess what! Bright is -- _

Ephram deleted the email. He didn't want to know about Bright. Perfect timing for Amy, thought Ephram. He walked further than he had to for coffee, and when he came back to the loft, Eyeliner Boy was gone -- also perfect timing.

"What is my goal for this year?" he said out loud, to the empty loft. "Stand up to Delia and take the ugly slipcover off my futon. Buy a real couch. Play more piano. Stop rewatching _X2_. Drink less coffee, less vodka, and more water. Start getting regular haircuts." He sipped his coffee -- it was almost gone. "Don't take up smoking. Have more sex with people whose names I know."

Yeah, he liked that last one. Maybe he could meet someone and not see someone from his past in their eyes. And he would learn their name and not think, "Brian starts with a B. Bright starts with a B. Therefore Brian reminds me of Bright." Or, his best one, "Sadie sounds like Amy and Laynie and therefore Sadie -- " who was taller than Ephram, had skin the black-purple color of eggplant, was shaved almost bald everywhere on her body, and weighed at least two hundred pounds -- "reminds me of Amy and Laynie and I cannot see her again."

He couldn't have sex with someone who reminded him of Bright. He couldn't talk to someone who reminded him of Amy. He couldn't kiss someone who reminded him of Madison. And he couldn't look at someone who reminded him of a Hart. Seven years, and he was still fucked up from the Abbotts and the Harts; five years and he was still fucked up from Madison. He was such a loser.

But that year he did, in fact, get rid of both the ugly slipcover and the old futon, and he bought a new couch, and he continued to play a lot of piano and do a lot of studio work for local bands, and he had a lot of sex. A lot of sex. Which he enjoyed very much. He deliberately cruised people who reminded him of the people from his past, and it made him kind of nervous, how much he enjoyed seducing people who looked like Bright. Not so much with the Amy and Madison -- he kept getting flashes of himself at sixteen, awkward and not suave. But Bright had always taken him at face value and let Ephram do what he wanted to do; Bright was the easiest demon to exorcize.

Bright wasn't a demon, though; maybe that was why. It took a long time, and a lot of vodka, resolutions be damned, but Ephram did figure out what the problem was. Bright never said things he didn't mean, because it wouldn't occur to him to bother lying about stupid shit. And yet Bright had said, "We'll keep in touch, dude" -- but had never emailed him. Or called. Or written. Or even told Delia to tell Ephram that he said hi.

Dick.

Dickface.

Fucking loser dumbass.

Creep.

Ugh.

*

**Part Two**

*

Sometimes when Ephram is walking down the streets of New York, or sitting in a restaurant, or riding the subway, he thinks he sees Bright.

He knows that it can't be, that his mind is playing tricks on him, because Bright would never leave Everwood, but he pretends for a minute that Bright's come out to the East Coast and hunted him up to say hi, how are you, what's life been like?

For his twenty-fourth birthday, his gift to himself, he bought a plane ticket back to Everwood. Time to face those demons. He'd go for a weekend -- not for a holiday or because it was Delia's birthday. Just a weekend to sit in the house and tease his father and Nina about finally getting together, to watch Sam moon over Delia and Delia roll her eyes impatiently. To see Amy and Tommy before they tie the knot; to maybe see Madison, whose dreams of being a rock star went up in smoke when her parents died in a car accident and she suddenly had to be the mother to her younger brother.

He emailed his flight information to Delia, who emailed him back almost immediately:

_Great! We can talk about where I should live when I come to New York for college. & Guess what! Bright is -- _

Ephram deleted the email. He didn't want to know what Bright was doing. Not if Bright wasn't going to tell him himself. God. Half a year of antagonism, half a year of tentative truce, and two years of friendship -- all for nothing.

That night Ephram did the same thing he did the year before: he went out and got drunk and picked up someone whose name he didn't ask for. He'd chosen this guy specifically because he looked so much like Bright, and Ephram didn't want to know that his name was really Alfred or Johann. Or this was how he thought Bright might look, the perfect Bright in his mind, the Bright who didn't succumb to the temptation to drink too much in college, the Bright who kept on playing sports and swimming, the Bright who would never streak his hair with this blonde, even though it would look good on him.

This was the Bright in Ephram's mind, just like last year Eyeliner Boy was the Ephram from Ephram's mind. And he kissed like Ephram imagined Bright would too. It was kind of gross, kissing the guy who looked like his best friend from high school, but it worked for Ephram. It made the whole night seem like a dream, like nothing was real. Every part of it was erotic, even the condoms, even the lube, and he was so drunk, it took him forever to come; he fucked Not-Bright for hours, and wished he had some of the weed he used to smoke all the time -- not because he needed to be high, but because all this needed was the haze of smoke and it would be perfect.

Not-Bright let out high-pitched yelps every time Ephram thrust into him, and he tangled his hands in Ephram's red bedsheets -- his apology to Delia from last year, for throwing out the yellow slipcover -- and he thrust his hips up and bit his mouth, and god, he looked so much like Bright. Ephram kept a hand tight around his balls, wouldn't let him come, made him ride the pleasure, and ride the pleasure, and his face was flushed and his hair was tousled, and Ephram thought he'd never seen anything so beautiful as a sweaty man with all his focus turned inward.

And finally that was what made Ephram come -- not the fucking, but the thought that he could be fucking Bright. He could have fucked Bright any time while they were in high school. Ephram wished he knew then what he knew now, that sex was fun and he was fucking good afucking, but the thought that he could be fucking Bright. He could have fucked Bright any time while they were in high school. Ephram wished he knew then what he knew now, that sex was fun and he was fucking good at it, and even when it hurt, it still felt good.

When Ephram came, he twisted his hand off Not-Bright's balls, jerked it up and over the head of his cock, twisted his fist around the head, and let him come too. He needed new sheets anyway.

Even pulling off the condom and tying it and throwing it away was erotic -- it felt like fucking again.

Ephram fell asleep wishing that he could go back, and tell sixteen year old Ephram not to be such a scaredy cat, that it was okay to think about things like being gay and wanting to fuck your best friend instead of his sister. Probably Colin'd had that problem too. He had no fucking clue how he'd missed all of this as a teenager -- when he was forty, what the hell was he going to realize he was missing right now?

Plus, Ephram was having a hard time believing that everyone in the world wasn't gay. Especially when confronted with biceps like the one he rested his head on to fall asleep.

When he woke up, his head was still on the bicep, and he groaned silently, and crawled out of bed. He needed an aspirin and some coffee and to get Not-Bright out of his bed so he could start his day. But first a shower, because he was covered in dried come and it was flaking off and that was so very gross. He did feel good, though -- that was good sex, even if it maybe wasn't the best Ephram ever had (but he'd learned years ago that you never had your best sex when you were drunk), and Ephram finally felt like he could move on and let go of the fact that Bright had dropped him once he'd left Everwood. His mind was. Lighter, maybe. Or just not quite as filled with anger.

So he'd go back to Everwood in a few weeks and see Bright and smile at him and pretend like six years and a hundred lovers and a million lifetimes hadn't passed between them.

It was in the shower that his fingers remembered it, the clumsy scar on the stomach of the man lying in his bed. He rinsed his hair out, scrubbed at his skin perfunctorily, and dried off in record time. Not-Bright was still laying there in the sunlight, arms splayed out, one foot hanging off the edge of the bed. The sheets were pooled around his hips. And there it was. The scar.

_Shit._

Sleepy eyes blinked up at Ephram, and a wide grin, and goddamnit, Ephram knew that mouth, knew it as well as his own, and not because he'd spent so much time licking it the night before.

"Bright."

"Ephram, dude, it's too early. Don't you have curtains or something?"

"No."

"Whassap, dude? Come back to bed. It's too early."

"What are you doing here?"

"Didn't Delia tell you? I was surprising you for your birthday."

"Bright, we had sex."

"Well, yeah, man. That's what guys do."

"Only if they are gay."

"Well, you're gay. And I'm gay. So I guess last night we were gay together. I'm going to go back to sleep, whether you are or not."

Ephram blinked once, twice; Bright rolled over and his rhythmic breathing wasn't any louder now than it had been before, but damned if Ephram didn't feel like it filled the room.

He went into the kitchen area and picked up his phone and dialed Delia's number. Instant coffee would have to do -- he and his younger sister needed to have a chat. He stirred the freeze-dried pieces into hot water as the phone rang, and when his sister's sleepy voice said "Hullo?", he snapped at her.

"Why didn't you tell me Bright was gay?"

The sleep cleared from her voice almost immediately, and her irritated tones poked at the hangover threatening to descend.

"What do you mean you emailed me about it years ago?"

"Ephram, do you even read my emails? Why does it matter that Bright is gay anyway? You're gay too. You jerk. Do you know what time it is here?"

She hung up on him, and he scowled at the phone. Fucking A. He wasn't quite sure how to feel, so instead of thinking about it, he dumped the instant coffee down the drain and shoved his feet into his sneakers. Any other morning, if he needed to think about something, he would sit down at his piano and play along with each of the Art Tatum records he'd acquired for Will through eBay, but he couldn't do that today. If he woke Bright up again, he wouldn't go back to sleep, and Ephram didn't want to talk to him.

He walked, his iPod tucked in his pocket, buds in his ears. He listened to old piano jazz and new guitar jazz, and found himself wandering pas Jonas's old apartment, sipping coffee in front of the Catholic school his daughters had attended, browsing through hand-labeled mix tapes on Broadway. Anything to avoid thinking about what he'd done last night, what his dick was still sore from doing.

Fuck.

He circled back around, walked up Deveboise, past the post office he usually avoided, because the clerks were so rude, past the Bushwick houses, and got another cup of coffee from the gas station. And one for Bright, too. He couldn't remember if Bright drank coffee -- couldn't remember Bright drinking anything but cherry Coke and Gatorade -- but it couldn't hurt to have one. Did he have milk? He bought milk, too, and doughnuts, and picked up bananas and apples and oranges from the health food store.

He kicked the door shut, set it all down on the table. Bright was awake. In the shower. Singing a pop song that Ephram had done the piano track for -- lite FM stations loved their faux piano jazz and Bright did love his lite FM stations. Some things were burned into Ephram's memory.

Some things Ephram wished weren't -- like Bright's handwriting from that stupid note he'd written Ephram's first week in school, pretending to be Amy. Like Bright crying one night Ephram's senior year, because Bright had never thought he'd have to go to college without Colin. Like Bright clapping him on the shoulder the day he left for New York and saying, "We'll keep in touch, dude." Like Bright's face, bright red and sweaty, his mouth open as he came, saying something -- saying Ephram's name.

God, Ephram was an idiot.

"Dude, breakfast!" said Bright, and he sat down at the table. His hair was wet, and Ephram could barely see the blonde streaks that, the night before, he had been so sure marked this man as being _not_ Bright Abbott.

Bright was intruding on Ephram's world, his voice loud and colorful, and it hurt Ephram's eyes to listen to him.

"Coffee? Yes, excellent -- milk and sugar? Thanks. It's almost like you're expecting me! But I told Delia to keep it a secret. She's never been able to. She told you that I was gay before I even told my family."

"She never told me," said Ephram dully. He rested his forehead on the rim of his coffee cup and closed his eyes, let the steam from the black coffee soak into his pores. "She never told me you were gay, she never told me you were coming."

"She told me she did." Bright reached out, grabbed the only chocolate frosted doughnut, took a gulp of coffee. "Either way, I guess you know now, huh, dude?"

"Yeah, I definitely know now."

Ephram watched Bright eat his way through three doughnuts, two apples, and an orange, and drink all of his coffee, and most of Ephram's. Clearly _nothing_ about Bright ever changed. Except his sexuality. And his hair. And his fashion sense, because the Bright Ephram had known would never have worn the sexy jeans and cream-colored sweater he'd had on the night before. And his eyes, which crinkled a little more. That made sense -- Bright was twenty-five. A quarter of a century. More than one-fourth of his life already lived.

Ephram studied Bright's mouth. Still pink. Still perfectly shaped. Still quirky and cocky and charming. These hadn't been words he would have used to describe Bright when he was seventeen or eighteen. This was the Bright from his imagination, built up over the years, come right to life.

"Ephram," Bright was saying. "Ephram! Yo, E! Snap out of it!"

Ephram squinted at Bright's mouth, still focused on him. His teeth were yellower, but --

"What are you doing, Bright?"

"If you're going to stare at my mouth instead of listening to me talk, I'm going to give you something to look at. I wonder if this is how girls feel when I stare at their tits?"

Ephram watched, bemused and a bit stunned, as Bright knelt down on the floor, unzipped Ephram's jeans, and reached into Ephram's pants. He took Ephram's cock into his mouth, all the way into the back of his throat in one smooth motion, no gag reflex, no choking noise, just hot wet deep scrape teeth mouth tongue oh god --

Ephram slid down in his chair, pushing his cock further into Bright's throat, but it wouldn't go any further -- Bright had all of Ephram inside his mouth, his tongue licking at Ephram's balls, one hand on Ephram's thigh, the other gripping Ephram's ass, and it took almost nothing, no time at all, and Ephram was coming.

Bright's eyes never left Ephram's, not until Ephram closed his, and dropped his head back, and groaned.

His hands were gripping the sides of the chair, and his fingers had cramped. Bright moved away, licking his lips, wiping his mouth off with the back of his hand. "Hey, man," he said. "You know what I've always wanted to do?"

Ephram didn't answer him, just tried to focus on breathing, on staying conscious, on not dying. Bright fucking Abbott had just gotten down on his knees and given Ephram fucking Brown a blow job. The world was fucking _ending_.

And it turned out that what Bright had always wanted to do was go to Belvedere Castle, and pretend he was a knight in shining armor saving a princess. So that was what they did, and Ephram even let Bright carry him triumphantly through Central Park. They scandalized a lot of nannies, and entertained a lot of little girls. That was another thing that hadn't changed about Bright. He still attracted children like a fucked up magnet.

"What do you do now?" asked Ephram. They were laying on the grass in Central Park, eating pretzels -- Bright's with a lot of salt, Ephram's with a lot of mustard -- and sharing a diet Coke.

Ephram was squinting into the sun. It was the same color as Bright's hair.

"I teach," replied Bright. "Fourth grade."

"No way!"

"Totally, dude. The kids? They fucking love me like you wouldn't believe."

"Everwood has gay teachers?"

"You are totally stuck on this gay thing, aren't you? Come on, dude. My mom's the mayor, my dad's the doctor, and my sister's future husband runs the only pharmacy in town. Do you really think anyone's going to give me shit for taking it up the ass sometimes?"

"Good point."

Bright wanted to see Madison Square Garden and Times Square. Ephram took him for dim sum lunch at Ollie's, and then to a movie under the Virgin Megastore.

"Under?"

"Under."

"Are you sure?"

"Positive. Trust me."

"Orlando Bloom is fucking hot, isn't he."

"I didn't like the elf hair. But yeah."

"Dude. The elf hair was fucking hot."

"It totally wasn't."

"You have no idea what you're talking about, man. The elf hair was where it's at."

"Bright, you still scare me."

The day stretched out forever, and Ephram never wanted it to end. It was like he was sixteen again -- but not, because it didn't suck and he didn't feel awkward and he knew what sex felt like. Funny how that never mattered in his day to day life now -- now that he'd had sex. A lot of sex. But when he was sixteen, he thought about it constantly. All the time. At least once an hour.

Now he only thought about it when he looked at Bright and remembered Bright's eyes looking into his, Bright's mouth around his cock, Bright's ass in the air.

They picked up Bright's stuff -- one duffle bag -- from his hotel in Manhattan, and ate dinner in Brooklyn, on Bedford Avenue, surrounded by kids who still dressed like it was 2004 -- which meant, really, that they still dressed like it was 1984. They ate samosa, which Bright had never had, and chana masala, which Bright had never had, and naan, which Bright had never had.

"I thought you said you'd eaten Indian before?"

"Mangoes, dude. And Gemma was half-Syrian."

"Syrians are not the same as Indian."

"It's all falafel, dude."

Ephram hadn't even invited Bright to stay -- he'd just taken it for granted that Bright would. Bright hadn't, though, or he wouldn't have gotten a hotel room.

"How did you find me?" Ephram asked Bright while they walked up the stairs to his apartment. "Did Delia tell you where to go?"

"She told me you liked to go to the one club. I was going to surprise you."

"You definitely did that."

"Hey, man, you started it. I wasn't the one who was all dancing up against you."

"I didn't know it was you. If I had, I wouldn't have -- "

"Then thank god you didn't." Bright said it so fervently, Ephram had to laugh. And then Ephram had to kiss him, push him up against the wall, bend him over the kitchen table, let him bend push Ephram up against the headboard. Bright's cock was huge, and Ephram felt like he was being split into two halves, and refused to think of it as metaphor for his whole life, just spread his legs more and added more lube and pushed down until Bright hit his prostate and bit his neck and the world went silver.

Ephram kissed his way down Bright's stomach -- still hairless, still hard, still perfect and tan. "Do you still lifeguard in the summer?" he asked.

"Of course," gasped Bright. "Someone has to keep all those teenagers from making out in the locker rooms."

Ephram nipped at Bright's thigh. The only teenager who'd ever made out in the locker rooms was Bright, or so he remembered.

They fucked until the first glimpses of sun came into the room through the still-curtainless windows, and when Ephram woke up, his head was on Bright's bicep again, and his arm was flung over Bright's stomach, and their legs were entwined.

"Don't you feel a little weird?" he mumbled into Bright's skin.

"Dude, I feel tired."

"But this -- it's weird."

"Just pretend like we're strangers. And pretend like I'm sleeping."

Ephram showered first again, made a mental note to get new sheets, because the crusty ones were not so much fun to sleep on, and went out for coffee and doughnuts again. He wished, briefly, for that first apartment, the one close to the 6 train and Murray's. He could hop on the L, take it to 14th and Sixth, but it was easier to just get the slightly-stale doughnuts and slightly-burnt coffee.

When he got back, Bright pushed a notepad across the table at him.

"You missed a session yesterday," he said seriously. "I wrote down all your messages .Why don't you have voicemail? Or that internet mail that emails your voicemail to you? I'm sure it would be easier than this bullshit machine. And you should call Delia -- she's mad at you."

"You know..." Ephram leaned against the kitchen counter and crossed his arms over his chest. "I always thought you would some how end up with Delia."

"Well, if I decide that I don't like you after all, I can go for her some time after she's legal."

"Ha ha. You're funny."

"I know. That's why the chicks dig me and the dudes think I'm cool." Bright pawed through the bag of doughnuts, took the chocolate covered one first again. "Dude, you're gonna spoil me. Have you thought about coming back to Everwood and being my bitch for the rest of your life?"

"Somehow I don't think that would be as fulfilling for me as it would for you." Ephram scanned his messages. Bright still had loopy handwriting -- perfect for a teacher. And pretty, too. Three messages from Gary at the studio -- they were supposed to do mixing and Ephram had totally forgotten -- and a message from one of his old quartet buddies with info about a possible gig coming up that they wanted Ephram for. Two filled with obscenities from Delia, and one from Rose Abbott, asking for Bright to call home, which was crossed out, and underneath it said, _Everyone says hi, E._

Ephram felt his chest twist a little.

"Why didn't you ever write to me?" he asked Bright abruptly. "Pretend I don't sound so much like a nagging girlfriend, and just answer the question," he added when he saw Bright's mouth curve into a smirk.

"Because I thought you probably didn't want to hear from me.," Bright said around a mouthful of doughnut. He paused and took a gulp of the coffee that Ephram had pre-added half-a-pint of milk and seven sugars to. "You know, that whole Madison thing didn't work out, and the Amy and Tommy thing. Dude, I was like, representative of everything that sucked for you for three years."

"Except you didn't suck. And I didn't call because I thought you didn't want to hear from me, because you didn't call me." Ephram broke off a piece of Bright's frosting, and got his hand slapped for the effort. The frosting was good, though. He should eat doughnuts from gas stations more often.

"Well, that means we're both assholes."

Ephram straddled a chair, pushed his face near Bright's. Bright hadn't brushed his teeth or taken a shower -- he still smelled like Ephram's bed. Like Ephram. It was hot as hell, but Ephram pushed the arousal away. This was more important. He didn't want a relationship; it wasn't like he was trying to talk Bright into being in love or something stupid like that. And he wasn't trying to feminize them, or give them a social context or anything like what people were always trying to do -- he didn't care about that shit. He hadn't gotten his closure -- he didn't get to fuck Not-Bright -- he fucked Real Bright. And that was fucked up. So he needed his closure now. Why right now, he had no idea. But he always did have shit timing. Or so Will used to tell him.

"So why come to New York now?"

"Dude, it's my twenty-fifth birthday, and your twenty-fourth. I've always wanted to see New York. And I figured that either you hated me for something stupid, and we could just forget about it and move on, or it was a misunderstanding. And it looks like I was totally right -- as usual."

"You're such a dick."

"You're such a loser, Brown. I bet you still read manga."

"I can't believe you finally got it right!"

Bright leaned closer to Ephram, over the table. "I told you -- I get everything right."

Ephram moved in closer, too, smelling the chocolate on Bright's breath, suppressing a smirk. "You get nothing right."

"I get this right." Bright snapped at Ephram's mouth, and Ephram pulled a breath in, pulled on Bright's hair, pulled them closer together.

"It's too bad we didn't realize this when we were teenagers," whispered Ephram. "I mean, this is fucking weird, but it would have been awesome."

"No way." Bright pulled away from Ephram's mouth leaned further over the table and grabbed Ephram's shirt, hauled him up onto the table. "This would have been fucked up when we were teenagers. At least, when I was. Maybe you could have dealt with it, dude, but I had to come to this in my own time." He pulled Ephram's T-shirt over his head, and bit at Ephram's nipples. "I still think it's fucked up, but -- "

"But it explains why you were so jealous that I was friends with Colin," Ephram teased thickly. Bright bit his throat and pushed his shoulders down, and Ephram let his eyes fall shut.

Bright knew just how to touch him, just how to play him -- everything was right. They fucked right there on Ephram's kitchen table, and again in the shower. Ephram was exhausted and wanted to crawl back into bed -- but if he did, Bright would have followed, and he wouldn't have gotten any sleep anyway. And he needed new sheets. And he needed to call Gary. And he needed to get back to his real life. And his ass hurt.

"I'll see you tonight," said Bright, buckling his belt. "I'm going to explore."

"Do you -- "

"I have thirty bucks for cab fare in case I get lost, dude. I'm not, like twelve." Bright rolled his eyes, grabbed his wallet, and left. Five second later he was back. "Do you -- uh -- have a key I could have?"

"I don't even know..." Ephram finished pulling on his own belt, and buckled it before he went over to his dresser. "I might." He pawed through a styrofoam bowl filled with crap that sat inside his top drawer. "Here!" He handed it over and Bright left again.

Two hours later, Ephram found himself in midtown, in Gary Lessing's tiny recording studio, pouring his heart out to Gary over coffee and ProTools. "And suddenly I'm caught up in the fucking minutiae of every goddamn moment and his fucking eye lashes!" he finished, and drained his coffee. "Do you have any vodka?"

Gary wrinkled his forehead and rooted around in his desk. "A bottle of Manischewitz," he offered.

"That'll do." Ephram twisted off the cap and took a swallow. "This stuff is foul. I'd forgotten."

"Don't you buy it for Passover and Hanukah and -- "

"Dude, I cannot remember the last time I had a Seder."

"Did you just call me dude?"

"Oh, god, he's rubbing off on me." Ephram banged his head into Gary's desk. "What the hell am I going to do?"

"Ephram, I don't even think you need to ask that. You're going to fuck him until your eyeballs fall out and he has to go back to Everwood, and then you're going to think about him a lot, and then you're going to move on. What -- you think you're going to fall in love and get married to your childhood sweetheart?"

"His sister was my childhood sweetheart. Not even. His sister was my first crush. I was fifteen!"

Gary leaned his head on one arm. His pudgy face was always sweaty, and he was going bald, and his fingers were stubby, and Ephram loved him to bits. He thought they might have even slept together at one point, but couldn't remember; they must have been really drunk because Gary usually went for the Chelsea boys with hard bodies and store-bought tans.

Bright's tan was real.

Ephram made a mental note to never introduce Gary to Bright.

"Well," Gary finally said. "If you decided that you wanted to sort of. Uh. See where this goes. Like you did with Jonas. You could always move back to Everwood and do the mixing from there. Or not, even -- you don't need the money. Take a hiatus. Write some music. Play more piano and have a lot of small town sex and hang out with your sister."

Ephram frowned. "Can I do that?"

"I hate to break it to you, Eph, but you're not the only producer in town. You're not even a producer -- not really, since you don't put money in. These kids will survive without you." Gary gestured to the room. "It's not like this is Maverick's studios or anything."

"It would take time to arrange."

"A few days."

"I can't just go running off."

"Of course not."

"I have a life here."

"Right."

"I have stuff. To do."

"Lots of it, I'm sure."

"There is no reason for me to think that Bright wants me to move back to Everwood."

"You could ask him."

"That's ridiculous." Ephram saved their work in ProTools and closed their files. They were clearly not going to get anything else done. "Except it makes sense. Okay." Ephram stood up and grabbed his bag from the back of his chair. He slung it over his shoulder.

"Ephram?"

"Yeah, Gary?"

"I'll clear us for the rest of the week. And next time you come in? Wear something that hides those hickeys. It's distracting." Gary smiled at him, then turned back to the computer banks on the other side of the room as Ephram scowled his way out of the room.

*

**Part Three**

*

Sometimes when Ephram is walking down the streets of New York, or sitting in a restaurant, or riding the subway, he thinks he sees Bright.

He knows that it can't be, that his mind is playing tricks on him, because Bright would never leave Everwood, but he pretends for a minute that Bright's come out to the East Coast and hunted him up to say hi, how are you, what's life been like?

Except Bright did leave Everwood, and did come to the East Coast, just to say hi, how are you, what's life been like? And then he went off by himself, and didn't tell Ephram where he was going, so it was extremely possible that Ephram could, in fact, run into Bright at any minute. And that was creeping Ephram out -- especially since he was still looking for wide-eyed Bright Abbott in those horrid orange sweaters, not new, schoolteacher, junior league basketball coach Bright Abbott, in tan and brown and cream.

Ephram decided to go to Murray's. Not the closer one on Eighth Avenue, but back to the one on Sixth. It wasn't likely that Bright would have chosen the West Village as his pilgrimage, and Ephram wanted a bagel. A garlic bagel with kalamata olive cream cheese, and coffee. No -- not coffee. It wasn't worth testing to see if their coffee had changed in the year or two since Ephram had been to Murray's. He took his bagel and a bag of chips to the Xando that was still on the corner. Some things didn't change. Lots of other things changed, though. The building on the opposite corner used to be a New School building, and was now an NYU dorm. The building across the street from Xando used to be a jewelry/music shop, and now it was a McDonald's, and the McDonald's that had been further down the street was a Wendy's.

Xando still had good coffee, though, and Ephram sat at a table by the window and watched people and dogs walk by, and thought about why he never got a dog, about why he never wore brown anymore, and about what the hell he was doing with Bright Abbott in his bed. And what, for that matter, was Bright doing? He used to think Ephram was ugly, geeky, and boring -- and then they became friends. Was the next step in all friendships to sex? If he had stayed friends with Amy long enough, would they have eventually had sex? If he hadn't told her that she was a self-absorbed, narcissistic bitch before he left for college, would they have stayed friends? Would they have stayed in touch? If he had ever bothered to return any of Laynie's phone calls when they were still in high school, would he have eventually had sex with her?

Why was sex so important to him suddenly, anyway? He had people in his life that he hadn't fucked. Lots of them. Gary possibly one of them. His father and his sister. The parents of most of the kids he taught piano -- all of them, in fact, since Jonas. He'd never slept with anyone who worked at Murray's, or any of the college kids he worked in the studio with.

Yes. He was still the same old Ephram, making rules for himself without realizing it, and following those rules until something kick started him out of it. Rules about piano, about New York, about Everwood, about New York versus Everwood, about girls, about Amy, about Madison. Rules about the people he slept with, and who he was willing to enter into a relationship with -- and they absolutely couldn't have anything in common. Did he have anything in common with Jonas? Was Jonas really his only relationship between Madison and Bright? Did lots five-night stands count? Was Bright really a relationship?

Ephram licked cream cheese off his finger and signaled for another coffee. What a fucking pain in the ass, to have to think about all this shit instead of just gliding along.

On his way home, Ephram stopped at Gristedes and ended up with too many groceries to carry on the train, but he did it anyway, and sat in a little bubble on the L, surrounded by plastic and glaring twenty-somethings.

  
_You are a twenty-something_ , he reminded himself. _And you live off your trust fund, just like all of them._

He would play piano for a little while, and try to get his thoughts straight, then cook dinner, and throw himself at Bright.

Fuck, he forgot to buy sheets.

Did they really need sheets? His couch pulled out into a bed, and there was a sheet on that. They could sleep there.

Ephram left his groceries on the kitchen table -- his father would be so proud, all those vegetables and milk and lean cuts of meat -- and he sat down at the piano. He flexed his fingers, cracked his neck, toed off his sneakers, closed his eyes, thought about Bright.

He played Bright's life -- golden boy, tragedy, guilt, realization of living, low expectations, worried best friend, worried older brother, fun-loving dork, choosing directions, Everwood community college, being left, teaching, the acceptance of being bisexual -- gay? -- and his decision to come to New York.

Ephram pieced it out in his mind. Bright needed closure too; they'd been close for that two years before Ephram left for New York, even though for some of that Ephram had still been in high school and Bright had gone on to the local community college. So he'd come, thought he'd run into Ephram at Ephram's favorite club, maybe buy him a drink, see how life had changed him, make his peace, go back to Everwood a little happier.

But Ephram had spotted him first -- him and those ridiculous shoulders and that sexy sweater and the streaks in his hair that High School Bright never would have added. Ephram had danced across the club to him, hair spiked up and gelled, the littlest bit of eyeliner, black nail polish. Ephram knew he wasn't bad to look at, especially when he was cruising. He always went home with his target -- well, usually. No one had a 100% success rate, but Ephram's was close. It was his mouth, he knew; no one could resist a wide pink mouth. And maybe it was partially his body, since he never lost the leanness he had during his teenage years, no matter how much beer he drank and carbs he ate.

Ephram had danced up to him the same way that he'd danced up to thousands -- okay, maybe hundreds... maybe not even hundreds. Ephram danced up to him the same way that he'd danced up to every other hot guy or girl he'd gone home -- or to an alley -- with in the past few years. Hips moving, hands running over the chest of his target, grabbing the belt loops of the pants. Grabbing the belt loops always locked it -- there was just something about it that was sexy. That was the number one way people cruised Ephram, too -- grab his belt loops, pull him close, whisper right over his mouth so he could feel hot breath on his lips.

It all worked every time.

Ephram's breath came in gusts and his fingers moved faster over the keys as he remembered the messy groping and kissing in the taxi cab, stuck in traffic on the Williamsburg Bridge, unbuttoning Bright's pants, the anticipation as they kissed their way up three flights of dimly lit stairs. Bright's smooth back, and scent of desire hanging heavy in the air. He'd pushed Bright onto the bed, onto his back, and undressed quickly, and his erection was almost painful, and he'd knelt between Bright's legs, and not even given him a quick wank before smoothing on a condom and squirting the lube and pushing in.

It wasn't the urgency that had Ephram caught up. He'd felt urgent before. And he'd had better sex -- although not better sex than the very sober shower sex they'd had that morning.

No, it was. Something. There was something. And since Ephram couldn't put it into thoughts or words, he put it into music.

And when he finally stopped, his wrists were sore and he was sweating and thirsty, and he let his head drop onto the keys, stayed there until he caught his breath.

Bright was sitting at the table.

"I didn't hear you come in," said Ephram. He didn't move for one of the bottles of water in the fridge, or wipe off his forehead, or apologize for his sweat-soaked t-shirt.

"Dude, I don't think you would have heard an entire army of Orcs," replied Bright. He was cradling a bottle of beer, one of the items Ephram had brought home and in the of the kitchen.

"How long have you been here?"

"Long enough."

Ephram sniffed the air. "You cooked?"

"I'm hungry. I'm a growing boy who needs to be fed. And you did buy food." Bright gestured at the stove. "It's just soup. I had to call my mom to find out how to do it, but it's vegetables and dumplings."

"You made dumplings?"

"My mom says one day I'll make a very lucky man a beautiful wife." Bright batted his eyelashes at Ephram, leaned back in his chair until only two legs were on the floor. "Seriously, dude. That was some intense shit. I don't think I ever heard you play before."

"You must have -- I played all the time when you were in college."

Bright took another sip of his beer, and Ephram decided that was what he wanted instead of water. With a slice of lemon. "Yeah, but that was other peoples' shit. This was yours, right?"

Ephram skirted Bright's chair and opened the fridge. The beer wasn't there, but the other groceries he'd purchased were. "Yeah, that was mine. Where's the beer?"

"Freezer."

"How could you tell?"

"That it was in the freezer? Well, dude, I did put it there myself."

"I meant about my work." The bottle burned Ephram's hand with cold. He twisted the cap off and tossed it in the sink, closed his eyes for the first sip. A little sour, a little bitter, a little fruity -- just like him. Perfect.

He opened his eyes in time to see Bright's shrug.

"Just a feeling. You up for some soup or you want a shower first?"

"Shower first." Ephram decided to forgo the lemon, and drank his beer in gulps. Bright watched with raised eyebrows and a half-smile. Ephram wanted to bite those lips, to suck on them, to get down on his knees and open his mouth around Bright's cock. He set the empty bottle in the sink, burped loudly, wiped his mouth off with the back of his hand, and pulled off his shirt. "Well?" he asked Bright. "Are you coming?"

"Hopefully." Bright waggled his eyebrows.

"Uh, that was lame. But I'm going to let you fuck me anyway in hopes that some of my good taste will rub off on you." Ephram rubbed his face with the shirt, ran it over his arms and chest, then threw it on the floor.

"You make every word sound dirty," said Bright. His eyes were glowing as he watched Ephram unbutton his jeans, push them over his hips. They stayed crumpled on the floor as Ephram stepped out of them and walked away. He had a nice ass. He knew he had a nice ass, and not only because Bright had told him so, over and over again the night before. He ran a hand over a cheek, rubbed a little, glanced at Bright over his shoulder.

Bright was watching him in a scary way. A predatory way. A way that made Ephram hard very suddenly, so hard he was dizzy and had to put his hand out and touch the wall to keep himself upright. And immediately Bright was there, the glow of heat gone from his eyes, his arms around Ephram's shoulders.

"Hey, are you okay?"

Ephram looked down ruefully at his erection. "I guess I just got up too fast."

"Now who's lame?" Bright rolled his eyes. "Come on, prodigy, let's make beautiful music together."

Ephram laughed and let Bright guide him into the bathroom.

#

By the time they got around to eating the soup, the dumplings were as heavy as bricks. Bright poked at one with his spoon. "I'm kind of afraid of this," he said somberly.

"Me, too. Do you think if I eat one, it will expand and fill my stomach and I'll explode?" Ephram scooped his dumpling out of his bowl, and sat it on his napkin.

"No, _this_." Bright did the same with his, and then poked at the vegetables at the bottom of his bowl.

"Vegetables? I mean, I know that carrots can be kind of intimidating, but -- "

Bright put his spoon down. "Don't be a pain, Ephram."

"Was that your teacher voice? Because that sounded like your teacher voice. Are you going to make me write on the chalkboard one hundred times, _I, Ephram Brown, will stop being a pain in the ass_?" Ephram flashed a grin at Bright and sucked a string bean into his mouth.

Bright smiled back, but it didn't reach his eyes, and Ephram's stomach suddenly hurt.

"I'm going back to Everwood tomorrow. I was never going to stay longer than a few days," said Bright. "And I wanted to have, like, a real grown up discussion with you about what's happening. But apparently -- "

"I was thinking maybe I would head back with you. I mean, I have a ticket for a few weeks from now, but maybe I'll exchange it. Take some time off. Hang out with Delia and Sam and, you know, you. And everyone." Now it was Ephram's turn to poke at his soup instead of eating it. He didn't want to have this conversation. He didn't know what to say to Bright, didn't know how to talk about this. Of course, he'd never had to do it before. He and Jonas never talked -- never. Not like they were a _couple_ with relationship _issues_. It was just a thing and then it wasn't, and...

Bright was laughing at him. His mouth was curled up in that half-smirk that Ephram'd always hated. It was an infuriating look, and always had been, and now it was made worse by the knowledge that Bright could use that smirk for the powers of truth, justice, and hot sex, as well as to make Ephram feel like a naïve jerk.

"So what, dude?" Bright said. "You're going to come back to Everwood, a place you've always hated, so we can be big, gay, domesticated boyfriends, and live happily ever after?"

His words eerily echoed Gary's, and a panicked _No_ was the only answer Ephram could come up with. He didn't want that bullshit, didn't want some faux-hetero lifestyle filled with china patterns and gingham curtains and a partner who was a second grade teacher. Not even if it meant 24-hour access to Bright's shoulders and cock.

"I -- I don't think I'm really the happily ever after sort of person." Ephram took a deep breath that turned into a sigh without his permission. "I guess -- I just thought..."

Bright sat back in his chair, tilted back the way he had earlier that afternoon. "Or maybe you didn't think?"

"No, no, I definitely did think. I mean, all afternoon. And I guess I kind of. Saw you as, like a sign or something. I don't know." Ephram pressed his hands to his eyes. He suddenly felt extremely old. Ready to be put out to pasture at twenty-four. "It's like. You showed up and time slowed down. I'm noticing things, really feeling every second. Not in a bad way. But in -- in -- in the sort of way that is sort of implying that it's. You know. Time for my life to finally _begin_." He didn't look at Bright, didn't want to see what he was sure was a look of exasperation and irritation on Bright's face.

Bright was silent for a few moments, and Ephram could hear the clink of Bright's spoon against his bowl, the rustling noises of napkins being wadded up and thrown away. Water. The chair creaking as Bright sat back down. It was probably about time for another trip to Red Hook for more Ikea chairs, actually, because the one Ephram was sitting in felt like it was creaky and old and ready to fall apart too. How long had it been since he'd even sat at his table?

He hadn't been bullshitting; he really did feel as though his life had been moving at a pretty fast clip. And then Bright showed up, and everything came to a complete stop, coalesced on Bright, focused, narrowed. Suddenly the weight of years he'd lost was heavy, and he wished he could go back and really experience everything he'd done, pay more attention to feelings and thoughts and savor it all.

Finally Bright spoke. "Dude, what does that even _mean_?"

"I don't know." Ephram looked up at Bright, and there was almost none of the goofy seventeen year old left in the twenty-five year old man. This was someone new, someone different, someone who looked and sounded like Bright, except was a grown up, with a grown up job and a grown up personality. And he had all these new experiences that Ephram hadn't been part of -- and he wanted to be part of them _now_. He didn't just want back the best friend he'd ever had, the only person who ever snarked back at him properly, the wingman to his pilot -- he wanted _more_. But no, he didn't know what it all meant. Not at all.

"Well, I can't tell you." Bright reached a hand across the table and tapped Ephram's fingers. "But if you want to stay here and then come back to Everwood for that visit in a few weeks, we can both try to think about it. I mean, dude, it's heavy shit to be all moving in with someone after a couple of nights of sex."

"It was hot sex, Bright."

"Dude, I know. I was _there_." Bright rolled his eyes and pulled his hand away. "Whatever."

"Are you -- seeing -- "

"Anyone? In Everwood? Are you kidding? And get real. If I was, would I be here with you?"

"I guess not." And he insulted Bright by asking, Ephram realized. That was also new -- Bright having _feelings_. Feelings that he thought about and -- that was it. It wasn't that Bright was a grown up. It was that Bright, like -- he -- he like _knew_ himself now. Weird shit.

"Grandma joined PFLAG when I told her I was bi." Bright quirked the corner of his mouth up. "She's been introducing me to eligible young men for years now."

"I thought you were straight up gay?"

Bright reached around his own back and opened the freezer door, pulled out two beers one-handed, gave one to Ephram. "Nah, girls can be hot too. I feel like somehow you know that. Hold on, I'll get your lemon."

"How -- "

"Dude, you never change." Bright pulled out a small dish, and Ephram raised his eyebrows. The slices of lemon were arranged in the shape of a flower. Bright smiled sheepishly. "You played that fucking piano for a long time."

Ephram shook his head and took a piece of lemon off the dish. "So did you go out with any of Edna's young men?"

"A few. They just didn't measure up." Bright took a long pull of beer. "They were all nice enough, but..."

"But?"

"I realized I have this thing for talented and sulky brunettes with New York accents." Bright spread his hands out. "What can I say, dude? You were my best friend for like three years. It was a hard act to follow."

Ephram choked a little on his swallow of beer and his eyes watered. "You're such a jerk, Abbott."

"You're such a dork, Brown." Bright lifted his beer bottle and tilted it toward Ephram's, and they clinked together. "So let's just. Relax? See where it goes? We have all the time in the world, and whatever. You know, we're young and virile and can sit around talking about everything instead of doing anything."

Ephram watched Bright drain the bottle of beer, and felt his toes tingling from the alcohol and lack of food. His fingers burned to touch Bright's impossibly perfect skin; all he wanted was Bright's mouth on his. He crawled up onto the table, pushing aside the empty beer bottles. He sat on his haunches in front of Bright, sucked the fruit of the lemon off the rind, pressed their mouths together, pushed lemon juice onto Bright's tongue. His head was higher than Bright's like this, his mouth coming down instead of moving up, and Bright's neck was the one tilted back. Ephram liked it like this -- topping from the top for once.

He pushed his hands into Bright's shirt, fingers deftly undoing buttons, nails scraping over nipples. If they had all the time in the world, he was going to make the most of it, and linger -- touch every place he wanted to touch, and kiss every place he wanted to kiss, and get his tongue into every crack and crevice.

He moved his mouth down to Bright's neck, leaving a trail of saliva and lemon, and Bright let his head fall back to give Ephram better access. Bright's skin smelled like Ephram's sandalwood soap, and tasted like salt and yeast over the tart sour lemon. Ephram turned his head and spit the piece of juiced lemon onto the floor, gnawed on Bright's skin, testing the elasticity, let his teeth mark Bright's collarbone.

"You have the best collarbone ever," Ephram murmured into Bright's skin. He sat back, and pushed Bright's shoulders until Bright moved his chair back, and swung his legs around, eased himself down onto Bright's lap. Bright's cock was hard against Ephram's ass, and Ephram could feel every ridge of it through his sweatpants. Bright's hips thrust up, and Ephram ground his own cock against Bright's stomach. Bright's mouth was right at the hollow of Ephram's neck, his tongue barely touching Ephram's skin, but it was enough. Bright's fingers dug into Ephram's thighs, and his legs fell apart under Ephram's, pulling Ephram's legs further apart in turn. Ephram felt the burn as his thighs stretched and the pressure against his dick and Bright's tongue on his throat, and moaned, and Bright grabbed his hair and jerked his mouth to his. Their tongues clashed, and Ephram tasted the lemon in Bright's mouth, the sour beer, the sweetness of the vegetable soup. He could kiss Bright forever, his fingernails digging into Bright's back, Bright's hands in his hair, on his neck.

There was no reason to ever stop, and Ephram wasn't going to.

  



End file.
